Tired of dragging yourself out of bed every morning? It all changes now. Hear the top things I've been doing each morning to bring momentum and productivity to my days and feel great in the process. The moment you wake up is one of the most powerful moments of your day, let's make it a good one!

Jumpstart Your Day: A Guide to Mindful and Energizing Morning Routines

Are you tired of starting your mornings in a sluggish haze, dragging yourself out of bed, and wondering where all your time went? In this guide, we’ll explore practical, energizing morning strategies to help you feel accomplished and productive right from the start. Dive into these morning tips to jumpstart your day, create momentum, and set yourself up for success.

1. Don’t Hit the Snooze Button

One of the biggest culprits of groggy mornings is the snooze button. Every time we hit it, we end up falling back into shallow sleep, only to wake up feeling even more tired. Avoid snoozing by:

Counting down from three to get yourself out of bed.
Placing your alarm across the room so you need to physically get up to turn it off.
Starting with deep breaths, then stretching before leaving your bed.

Waking up promptly helps kick-start momentum for the day, ensuring that you wake up feeling focused rather than groggy.

2. Hydrate First Thing in the Morning

After hours of sleep, our bodies are dehydrated and ready to refuel. Start your morning by drinking a glass of water as soon as you wake up. This will:

Rehydrate your body and brain, preparing you for a productive day.
Boost your energy levels, helping you feel more awake and alert.

For coffee drinkers, remember to drink extra water throughout the day as caffeine can be dehydrating. Make a habit of staying hydrated to support energy, focus, and overall health.

3. Move Your Body to Boost Energy

A morning workout—even just 10 minutes of stretching, yoga, or a brisk walk—can improve your mood, increase focus, and elevate your energy for the entire day. Incorporating movement early on also:

Prevents the afternoon slump by stimulating blood flow and oxygen to the brain.
Strengthens mental resilience and sets a positive tone for the day.

Incorporate short, manageable activities into your routine. You can work up to longer sessions over time, but even a brief stretch or walk will make a difference in how you feel.

4. Fuel Your Body with Nutritious Food

The quality of our morning fuel sets the foundation for the day. Start with a balanced breakfast that includes protein, fiber, and healthy fats. If you’re a smoothie lover, try a nutrient-packed green smoothie:

Ingredients: a banana, a cup of unsweetened almond milk, frozen blueberries, frozen cherries, a tablespoon of peanut butter, and a cup of frozen spinach.
Blend it all up to start your day with a delicious, filling breakfast.

Eating a balanced breakfast helps maintain stable energy levels, supports your metabolism, and keeps your brain functioning optimally.

5. Avoid Checking Social Media First Thing

One of the most transformative habits is avoiding social media when you wake up. Checking your phone can fill your mind with distractions and unnecessary comparisons that lower your mood. Try instead to:

Delay social media for at least an hour to create a peaceful start.
Focus on being present with yourself and your goals for the day.
Consider meditation or setting intentions to help keep you centered.

Social media can wait! Prioritize starting your day with positivity and focus rather than immediately filling your mind with external information.

Why a Powerful Morning Routine Matters

Building an intentional, energizing morning routine is one of the most powerful ways to transform your day. By investing in a few core habits like hydrating, moving, and avoiding your phone, you’re creating momentum and giving yourself the mental clarity to handle the day’s demands.

Mentioned Resources:

NutritionFacts.org

Dr. Greger's How Not to Die Cookbook

You're listening to episode 17 of the Mindful Productivity Podcast. And today I'm talking all about how to jumpstart your day. If you're tired of having sluggish mornings, dragging yourself out of bed and feeling like there's so many things I could have already accomplished today. This is the episode for you. I'm going to give you some amazing tips for how to really jumpstart your day and step into momentum and feel really accomplished before you even head out the door. Stay tuned. There's so much here that you're going to want to try out this week.
Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live, and it all starts now.
Spring is finally starting to show its true self lately. And the other day, I decided, you know what? I'm going to mow the lawn. It's been years since I've mowed the lawn. In fact, probably over a decade since I actually did that. And so I put on some workout gear, some athletic wear, and went outside and got to it and was having a really hard time. I was going, Bella, I know I'm a little bit out of shape, but this was really difficult, and it took me about 45 minutes to mow the lawn.
And the entire time I'm pushing this lawn mower with all my might, and I'm starting to sweat like I'm having to wipe the sweat off my brow because it's dripping down on my face. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, this is so tough. And when I got around to the front of the yard, I realized that there's a handle that you can pull up on underneath the main part where you grip the lawnmower and it turns on the self driving part of the lawnmower. And I felt like a complete idiot.
But as soon as I hit that, I went, wow. Holy crap. This is so much easier. In fact, I was pushing the entire time. It was so difficult. I was not enjoying myself. Normally, I kind of don't mind mowing the lawn, but I was like, I was really having a hard time. I was feeling fatigued. I was like, when is this over? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do this again next week or the week after that. And as soon as the self driving part started, I was like, wow, this is so easy.
In fact, I don't really have to push at all. And it got me thinking about how many things in my life I might be pushing really hard for when really there's some kind of self driving component to it that I'm not even aware of or that I don't even know exists. I think we do this many, many times in our lives. We want something or we're working toward a goal or we're reaching towards something and we think that if we want it and if we like, the only way to have it is to push for it and that it has to be this, like uphill battle.
It has to be this constant push. And if there's not a resistance, then maybe it's not something we're supposed to have, right? Like this belief that we have to work hard in order to get something, whether it's money or reaching a goal or getting a raise at work or finding a new job or finding someone in our lives that we really want to connect with. But oftentimes there's a lot of things that really can work in our favor if we just find that lever. So today, that's kind of my question for you.
As you listen to the rest of this podcast, as you consider some things that you can do in the morning to help kind of give yourself that momentum, consider what things in your life you may be pushing for, pushing against with a strong resistance that might actually be way easier than you think the morning. And that moment when we wake up is actually one of the most powerful moments in your day. In fact, that's pretty much what I'm going to be arguing about arguing for in favor of during today's podcast.
Basically, when we get up in the morning, we have a decision to either create an intense amount of momentum and get ourselves out of bed and get going, or we can kind of drag ourselves and it can make the process a lot harder. It's very similar to walking my Bulldog, who is energized and is leading the way versus getting her to try to walk when it's raining outside and she just sits down and pulls me and refuses to keep going. Right? Like, there's a big difference in terms of our energy and how we show up for the day and how we decide to start.
In fact, I was talking to my husband the other day about morning routines, and he's really been inspiring me a lot, too. And he was saying a quote, he read something that said, you win the first hour of the day, you win the day, and that really resonated with me because the truth is that if we can accomplish the main things that make us feel super good and super amazing right away, first thing in the morning, then we're really giving ourselves this gift because then we don't have that added pressure.
We don't feel super frustrated that we didn't make time for a workout or this or that. And it can be really daunting to try to reach all those goals and try to get to all those things if we don't make them a priority. I know this is also hard, too, because a lot of times the things that make us feel really good are not necessarily something that we could put on our performance review, right? They're not necessarily something that our boss would be like, oh, yeah, or that our family would praise us for, even though I'm sure that there's someone in your life that's saying, hey, take some time for you, make sure you take more breaks or make sure you make time to move your body or eat nutritious food, right?
Everyone wants that for each other. We all want that for ourselves, but we don't always prioritize it. So today I wanted to take some time to talk about a few things that I've been doing lately and stepping into that have really, I guess you can say, up leveled my morning and what I mean by up levels, they just really made my day so much more productive, so much more inviting. I'm more excited to get out of bed. I actually get out of bed when I'm supposed to.
And these things are actually really simple, and it's just a matter of actually doing them some of these things. In fact, most of these things are going to be rather obvious, but I challenge you to keep listening and to give them a try, because maybe you haven't tried them yet, or maybe you haven't done them consistently, right? Sometimes there's even more power in being reminded of something and hearing it again or at a different way. I can think of so many times in my life where I've read something like, a thousand times, or I've seen an interview on YouTube, and I'm like, okay, that's cool.
For whatever reason, if I hear it on a podcast or if someone tells it to me in real life, it just hits me and it resonates deeper. So maybe this episode will do that for you. So the first tip I have for you is to stop hitting your snooze button, just stop doing it. And it's one of those things that I think you just have to be kind of black or white about, right? Because it's a snooze button, and if you keep hitting it, it's going to keep going off and you're going to go back to sleep.
And here's the thing, too. I know that it's hard to get up in the morning. I know that what we want more than anything is just ten more minutes of sleep. But when you think about hitting your snooze button in the morning, how many times do you hit it? Only to sleep a few more minutes and then feel like, oh, wow. I really feel great now. I'm so glad I hit that snooze button. I really just needed that four and a half extra minutes of sleep or whatever.
It was like, man, that really just put me in the zone. That really got me to where I needed to be like, no, it usually just creates a cycle and we get more and more tired and really we're not doing ourselves our brains, our bodies any favors. Now, there are ways that you can wake up so that you're not waking up in the middle of your REM cycle. There are ways to get more sleep and go to bed on time and make sure that you get whatever amount of sleep that you really need.
I know people that swear that they function on 6 hours of sleep, whether or not I believe them. For me, I know that I definitely need more like eight and a half hours if I can get anywhere from eight to 9 hours of sleep, that is like my golden zone. So really getting clear on, first of all, what time you need to go to bed and how much sleep you need to get. And again, if you can wake up when you're coming out, when you're more and more of that, like light sleep and not the deep REM sleep, you're going to not feel as foggy and stuff.
It's like when you start getting up at the same time every day and you start going to bed at the same time every night and you're really consistent with it. Then you naturally just start waking up. And it's fantastic. I got into a phase like that years ago where I would just naturally wake up at 05:00 a.m., and it felt great and I'm still working on getting back to that. Don't hit your snooze button. In fact, do whatever it takes to not hit it. One of my friends told me that she hears her alarm goes up going off and she takes a couple of deep breaths and she goes, okay, get up.
Another person has told me that they actually count down from ten or from five or even from three, and they just start counting down. And it reminds me of for all my friends out there and all these people listening that have kids, I've always heard that it's so much better to count down instead of counting up, because once you count down, that's it, there's nowhere else to go. Whereas if you keep I'm going to just count to ten, then what happens when you get to eleven and twelve?
Right? So donate your snooze button and this is really going to help you set up that momentum and step straight into the momentum of your day. When I was in high school, I was crazy. I may have mentioned this in another episode of the podcast, but I would set my alarm for, like six or 605, and within five minutes I would be out of bed in my running gear and out the door running. I would often wake up. I feel like I was finally up like mid run and looking back that self discipline, that consistency of getting up at the same time every day and not only that, but really moving like jumping straight into my run every day was a huge act of self love.
Sometimes being self disciplined can really serve us because like I've talked about with Genetic in our last podcast episode. Sometimes self love is the hard stuff. Sometimes it's not bubble baths and fruity lattes and all this kind of stuff. I don't think fruity lattes are a thing, but you get what I'm saying, right? It's not always these pleasant things. Sometimes it does require a little bit of hard work or a little bit of oomph until we start to feel like it's normal or we start to incorporate it into a habit.
So tomorrow morning or whenever you're listening to this podcast, whatever morning you have next, try getting up and don't hit your snooze button. In fact, I'm going to take try out of the equation, and I'm just going to challenge you to get up tomorrow without hitting snooze, see what happens, see how your day unfolds. See what changes. The second thing I want to talk about is drinking a glass of water first thing right away when you get up, if you think about it, you're sleeping for whatever it is.
8910 hours. Man, I wish I could sleep 10 hours sometimes, but my point is that you're going that entire amount of time that entire night and your body is not getting any water right. And our body can handle that. But to wake up and to instantly get some water in your body is going to do one of a few things. First of all, it's going to help renew yourself. It's going to get the blood flowing and pumping to your brain and throughout your entire body. We need water to survive and we need quite a bit of it.
In fact, it's really a great idea to drink about half your body weight in ounces of water. I know that can sound like a lot and work your way up to it, but you can really help get to that place and meet that goal of drinking enough water. If you start by drinking a glass in the morning, water is also really helpful and important in terms of supporting your joint health and just all the daily functions of your body. And here's another quick tip. If you are a coffee drinker like myself, for every 8oz of coffee you drink, you want to drink at least an additional 12oz of water, since the caffeine is going to deplete your body of some of that water intake.
The third thing that I have been doing this past week, especially is moving my body as soon as I can as soon as I get up. This is huge and goes a long way in terms of getting my workout in, but also really clearing my head and really giving me tons of energy throughout the day. As an entrepreneur and as someone who works from home, it's really been tempting and easy for me in the past to roll out of bed, move over to my computer without taking a shower, pour myself a few cups of coffee, and just get right into the day.
But what I find is that when that 11:00 a.m. And then 03:00 p.m. Time frame hits, I kind of get in this little slump, and it's really hard to refocus my energy and manage my energy levels. But when I get that walk in first thing in the morning or I get that running or I do that workout or whatever it is that yoga video I tend to find that afternoon slump isn't there as much or as heavily. So I really recommend that. And one thing I used to love doing well, I didn't love it at first, but I would get up really early.
When I had a nine to five. I would get up before work and get my workout in first thing before I could even think about it. When I lived in a studio in Seattle, it's about 400 sqft, and I would actually move the furniture in my living roomBedroom the night before so that I could get up and do my workout video. And there weren't any barriers to me doing that because there would be so many times when I get up and be like, oh, well, the chairs are in the way I have to move the coffee table, and I don't feel like doing that, so I wouldn't removing any barriers that you can to get that morning time in and bonus points, too.
If you're not checking your phone or not bringing your phone with you, I know for me I really enjoy listening to music in the mornings, but sometimes it's great if I'm out in nature to go on a walk without my phone and it really just revitalizes me and really puts me in an amazing mood. So see how it goes, moving your body first thing in the morning. And here's the thing too. It doesn't have to be something crazy. I love it when I make the time to get up extra early, like at five.
And I love going on longer walks, like I've been going on walks for anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes, getting my ten K steps in, listening to podcasts, listening to music, sometimes doing phone calls. It's been a really enjoyable part of my morning, but that doesn't mean that it has to be all or nothing. So sometimes there are days when I'm like, oh, my gosh like something's come up or I've got something I'm doing or I need extra time today, so I'm only going to be able to get a 20 minutes walk in.
That's still so much better than nothing at all. In fact, when I was a freshman in College, I was so dead on about getting my workouts in. And just like, I was in such good shape, and I felt so good. I remember there would be times like during finals week when I would literally have, like, half an hour between finals and studying and trying to shove food in my face when you're 18 or 19 and I would run to the gym, just even run for half a mile, whatever I could and run back up to the dorm, get some food and get everything done.
And that kind of mentality was what kept me feeling really good and kept me on top of my fitness game because there weren't really any big excuses. And it wasn't like I was super hard on myself or I had these rules, like, I had to be perfect or anything. It was really challenging the notion of, do you not have enough time? Like, sure, I didn't have enough time to go run a couple of miles and then do some deadlifts and then stretch and then catch up with so and so that I saw in the quad.
Right. But I did have enough time to go and do something so it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It just has to be all or something. Right? That's what I always kind of tell myself. Number four is to fuel your body in the morning. So if you're a breakfast person and a morning person, I know a lot of people out there fast. That's awesome, too. But if you find that it's really important for you to have that breakfast thing in the morning, fuel your body with something good.
It's the first meal of the day. It's the first nutrients that you're introducing to your body in the morning. That's going to kind of propel you throughout the day. Do you want it to be pop tarts, or do you want it to be something that's going to make you feel good? There's a time and a place for yummy, junk food, breakfast type stuff. Like, don't get me wrong. My husband and I have been mega guilty of buying those, like, oh, gosh, they're so horrible for you.
Like those, like, travel. We call them road trip pies. Like, they're at gas stations. They're basically just, like, probably the most disgusting thing ever filled with, like, cherry flavored corn syrup or chocolate stuff. And they're like, pies. Oh, gosh. I'm just even just thinking about them. I'm like, I remember always turning them over to just kind of glance at, like, the sugar intake. And my husband was like, no, don't even look, don't even look. Just enjoy it. It's a road trip. And this is the only time we get these.
So my point is that on most days, like, for 90% of the time, if you can feel your body with something good in the morning, you're going to do yourself so many favors. And one thing I've been loving making lately are green smoothies. And I've been drinking these for years. I tend to drink them seasonally, so when it's getting warmer out, I'm not a big fan of drinking them when it's cold. You can read all kinds of stuff about if you're into Ayurveda or anything like that about eating seasonally and eating like cold and warm foods depending on different dosha things like, there's so much information out there.
It's fascinating, but I found that I really do crave more like raw foods and smoothies and stuff like in the spring and summer smoothies make me feel so good. And one thing about them is if you drink green smoothies or if you have in the past, you feel it within five to ten minutes. I always feel so like, Whoa, these nutrients are hitting my body hard, right? And a lot of that has to do with the fact that you're removing some of the fiber and the lattice work in the fruit when you blend it.
Right. And sure, people could argue about the perfect things to eat and that this podcast is not about that. But I just want to say that having green smoothies for myself personally has made me feel really good. And I'll link to and post a couple of my favorite smoothie recipes on the show notes. But one of my favorite ones that I've been having lately is actually a variation out of the How Not to Die Cookbook by Dr. Greger, who I love if you ever want to check out his website, NutritionFacts.
Org, he's got amazing information about health and wellness, and he looks into all the peer reviewed studies of stuff. It's fantastic, but his book, his new cookbook, How Not to Die, is really great. And this smoothie is so good. Every time I've had somebody try it, they're like, oh, my God, I need to make this every day, and I pretty much do. Basically, it's a banana. It's about a cup of unsweetened almond milk. I usually put in half a cup of blueberries. These are all frozen, by the way, half a cup of frozen blueberries, half a cup of frozen, like dark sweet cherries, and then about a tablespoon of peanut butter, one tablespoon of ground flax meal.
And you want the ground stuff, you guys, because your body is not going to absorb the flax seeds, they'll just go right through you. So the flax meal is great. And then I put in about a cup of frozen spinach, and sometimes these smoothies turn out beautiful. If I have, like, a couple of extra strawberries or something, I'll throw those in there and it'll give it a more purple tone. But a lot of times these smoothies don't look pretty, like they're Brown or kind of Gray or like a dark, gross purple, but they taste so good.
And I personally use a Vitamix to blend them up. But you can use pretty much any blender, and I add water as I go so that they can be the right consistency. So that's just something that I've been really enjoying every morning. They make me feel super good. I'd love to hear your favorite smoothie recipes, and if you're a pro, smoothie or antismoothie, depending on how they make you feel. So another tip I want to share, and I'm sure that you've tried this or you've thought about this is to avoid checking your phone, specifically your social media first thing in the morning.
Seriously, I think about the days when I roll over in bed and the first thing I do is open Facebook, and it just makes me feel like icky. There's nothing exciting about it, and it's really more of a habitual thing I just noticed myself doing. It's not something I even want to do. It's the first thing I just think of which is telling, right? So I have now made a rule that I am not allowed to check any kind of social media for the first hour that I'm awake.
If I'm going to use my phone, it's going to be either because I'm going to use a meditation app, or I'm going to be going on a walk or a run and I'm jumping straight into music or a podcast. But I'm not doing anything else on there, and it's so refreshing, too. And you know what else? It kind of sets the tone like it gives you a blank slate for the day, because think about it if you pull up Facebook, and the first thing you see is like a news article that puts you in a bad mood or a friend that posts a political viewpoint or posts that you're like.
I never knew this about them, and now I feel away that doesn't set you up for a solid day. It's so different when you start your day feeling clear, feeling like things are simple and getting yourself out in nature, getting yourself on a treadmill or doing some yoga with Adrienne, doing something where instead of something being kind of like, forced into your head in terms of, like, think about this. Think about that or look at what these people are doing it's. How am I doing? How am I feeling?
Like, what's going on with me today? What's going on with my body? What do I want today to look like? And that kind of leads perfectly into my last point for today's episode is that when you do all these things and these are just some ideas. But when you start really creating momentum for your own morning and doing these things that help up level how you feel throughout the day, then you're really creating space and you're giving yourself the opportunity to say, how do I want to feel today?
What do I want to look for today? Right. So it's amazing when you wake up and I've done this so many times before just thinking about it. Now I want to get back into it where I get up and I set an intention for the day. And I say I'm going to look for this today or I'm going to find out this about something that I want in my life or I'm going to see the good in people or whatever it is. And I have a whole intention setting course within the mindful productivity hub that goes deeper into this and helps you set intentions and different exercises you can do to set intentions for the day along with meditations.
But these are just a few of the ideas that I'll share with you today, but really, just getting up. Just take a minute right now to just think about what your day would be like tomorrow to get up to get up straight away, right from your bed, get the momentum going, drinking a glass of water, you're lacing up your shoes or whatever, and you're moving your body and you're creating that momentum for yourself, even just moving your body. That's the quickest way to shift our energy.
Right? Like if you're ever in a bad mood or you're ever feeling stuck emotionally, sometimes moving your body physically can help you feel unstuck emotionally or unstuck with a way of thinking. Or maybe there's something that you feel like trapped in in terms of a decision or a situation that you're in. Moving your body can help you get out of that feeling. So I hope today's episode was helpful for you. You can find all of the show notes. Mindful Productivity Podcast and if you're ever interested in getting my support one on one, I am here for you.
I offer one on one coaching services and a variety of programs. You can always find more information. Mindful Mindful Productivity Podcast reach out to me personally at Info Mindful Productivity Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here. I love reading the comments and hearing from listeners like you often about how much they've been enjoying the podcast, how much it's been resonating with them. And I'm just so grateful to be here and be able to share all of this with you. I'll see you next week.
Hey, I noticed that you stayed all the way to the end of the podcast. Maybe that's because you didn't hit stop. Or maybe you were kind of hoping that there'd be some kind of extra message here. Well, if you have been thinking about working with me one on one, I am currently looking for you people that are wanting to shift into organizing their lives and not feel like this chaos is taking over. I'm talking to you. If you're the person that is tired of staying up all night with the best of intention of getting in bed at 830 or nine, yet you somehow still find yourself on your phone.
You know, everything that you need to do to organize your life and feel better, but you're just not doing it. And quite frankly, you're really ready for someone to help guide you along the way. And you're also kind of tired of maybe working with people in the past that just haven't supported you or have just given you the same old cheesy happiness advice that is great, but it's not actually helping you create tangible results in your life. If this is you, I have a special opportunity for you.
All you have to do is send me an email with the title. Episode 17 Episode 17 in the subject line, send me an email to Info Mindful Productivity Podcast and let me know that you're interested in working with me one on one so we can hop on a call and figure out if I am the right coach for you. All right, talk to you later.